Thank You to Those Who Have Followed This Site – Here’s Why I Wrote The Book

As I promised, I’d let details of my book, The Addiction Nobody Will Talk About: How I Let My Pornography Addiction Hurt People and Destroy Relationships, release out here and I’m happy to say it’s now available for pre-sale on both Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com and will be officially released on January 10. I want to thank everybody who has read this site for the four months it’s been active. The vote of confidence has made me believe there Is a market for my cautionary tale.

To be perfectly honest, I’m nervous about what comes next. What happens if it doesn’t sell? What happens if critics hate it? What if no critics review it? Will it help people? Will it just piss people off? I’ve probably had hundreds of articles, columns, editorials and other pieces with my byline over the last 23 years, but I’ve never released anything so raw and brutally honest. I’m scared how it’s all going to shake out.

I’d like to share a passage with you from The Addiction Nobody Will Talk About, from the introduction, that explains why I wrote the book. When my confidence wavers that I’m doing the right thing, I’m going to remind myself to return to this spot.

“In rehab and jail, I met some of the most real people on earth, once they were willing to let down their guard and accept who they really were. They were never just an alcoholic or just a porn addict. There was always a suitcase full of other issues happening, and addictions are just coping mechanisms to deal with sadness, anger, self-loathing, and fear. Toss in pre-existing mental health conditions, and you’ve lit a fuse that will eventually go off. Mine was thankfully snuffed out when the police showed up at my door. Had they not, I think my story would have eventually resulted in death, as unfortunately too many stories I know ended.

I decided to finally start putting pencil to paper after many long conversations with a thirty-year-old guy I met in jail named Tom. He was busted on a probation violation for a dirty urine test. Life got the better of him, and he succumbed to heroin again. He was awaiting a hearing to find out if he’d have to go serve the rest of the armed robbery sentence he was released early from only six months prior.

He had done three of the five years he was given for robbing a McDonald’s after hours. His ex-girlfriend was a manager, and he knew they transferred a giant amount of money from the time-locked safe to the bank on Tuesday nights between 11 and midnight. He jimmied open the drive-thru window, made his way to the manager’s office, and took over $5,000. Tom wore a mask, and if not for the unique handle on the gun he used being captured on security camera footage, he never would have been apprehended months later.

Tom needed the money to pay some very, very scary people off from whom he had purchased heroin. Despite being a good-looking guy who probably could have been a model before the drugs and one of the smartest, most-well rounded people I’ve met, heroin had Tom in its grips and even three years away from dope while in prison wasn’t enough to stop.

With many long, personal conversations about his shitty upbringing and lack of parental guidance, I saw in Tom what I saw in myself at the time of my arrest: a scared little boy who didn’t know how to make his way in the world and just wanted to be loved. I tried not to make connections with anyone in jail, but despite our many differences, we were very much the same.

The day I started writing this book was the day Tom asked me about sex addiction. He wondered if he was a sex addict. He liked porn, but since his first consensual sexual experience at twelve (his first non-consensual was around the time he entered kindergarten), he’d been with over eight hundred women. He knew the answer, and I think it was the first time he ever really admitted to himself that his addictions went further than drugs.

When I asked why he never mentioned it to me, he said he was more embarrassed by the sex than the heroin. I knew what he meant. It’s easy to talk about my alcoholism openly. I’m seen a hero by some for trying to conquer that beast and people congratulate me for going to rehab and being sober for over three years at the time I write this. Those same people who want to pat me on the back and shake my hand for dealing with alcohol addiction don’t want to touch me and go searching for hand sanitizer when I mention porn addiction or sex addiction rehab.

Tom’s admission made me reflect on the people I met who entered rehab for a drug or alcohol problem, but after spending time with admitted sex and porn addicts, they came to realize their sexual behavior was often negative and many times an unhealthy coping mechanism. Tom was just recognizing this. I’ve seen a lot of these “a-ha!” moments when people first connect-the-dots and realize their sexual behavior may be an addiction. It’s powerful, and sad.”

I said to a friend of mine the other day that whether the book is a winner or a loser, at least it’s out of my system and in the world. He said that it won’t be a loser because not writing it would have been the loser move. I’ll try to hold onto that in the next few weeks as we find out if any media is willing to cover it, bookstores are willing to stock it and people are willing to buy it.

I hope you’ll consider investing a few dollars on the book. If you’ve enjoyed my articles on this site to this point, you’ll find the genesis of how it all began and learn a lot more about my struggle on a personal level.

Once again, thank you to those who have been supporting me on this site for a few months. I appreciate it. Welcome to those who may just be discovering it. I hope that this book and the site can begin to help open a dialogue about pornography addiction. It’s a problem that’s not going away and it has to stop being The Addiction Nobody Will Talk About.